Is something fundamentally wrong with Nigeria(ns)?

Some years ago, I got an article titled ‘Blacks Don’t Read’ that had been circulating on the Internet. The most provocative part of that article reads: ‘If you want to hide something from a black person, put it in books.’ This statement has been iterated so many times that it takes many forms. Sometimes the ‘black people’ is changed to ‘Africans,’ and the method for hiding is sometimes conceived as ‘writing it down.’ This provocative statement is founded on an enduring racial stereotype of the black, or specifically the African, as being a creature of orality rather than writing. Another dimension to this stereotype is that blacks are more materialistic than reflective. In other words, we think more of the belly than of tomorrow. We are creatures of the now rather than the future. And so, in the racially demented white mind, blacks are still slaves despite the best of their freedom rhetoric. And the best methods of containment are ‘Ignorance, Greed and Selfishness.’

Recently, Donald Trump, the Republican top contender for presidency of the United States, is alleged to have remarked that Africans are lazy fools who are only good at eating, lovemaking and thuggery. Well, the message here is clearly from a racial perspective: Something is considered to be fundamentally wrong with blacks and Africans. And these are not just scattered opinions of a few insane personalities; on the contrary, it is actually an ingrained perception that has endured for a long time. Everything seems to be wrong with Africans: Africa is the hungry continent; it is the poorest; it is the least developing; it is the least democratic; it has an enormous leadership deficit; and it is the very Dark Continent par excellence!

However, beyond the Western gaze which we may accuse of a racial ordering of the African self, Africans themselves have deployed a very critical realism that questions Africa and her predicament. I have a long-standing example in mind: Areoye Oyebola’s Black Man’s Dilemma (1976). There are three serious issues which Oyebola lamented about the continent. First, contrary to the anger we collectively felt about colonialism, Africa participated actively in her own decimation and domination, especially through the Trans-Atlantic slave tragedy. Two, African countries have failed to make any significant incursion into modernity. And third, and the most controversial: Africa has not made any significant contribution to world civilisations. Of course, Oyebola’s book generated the expected debates (with most scholars dismissing his realism about the African predicament). But then, he has also contributed his quota to the issue. And the question remains: Is something fundamentally wrong with us?

Close to 60 years ago, there was a mighty euphoria all over Africa as we celebrated what was called the African year of independence. In that year alone, 17 countries became independent from colonial servitude—Cameroon, Togo, Nigeria, Madagascar, Somalia, DR Congo, Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Ivory Coast, Republic of Congo, Gabon, Senegal, Mali, Mauretania. More than 50 years after independence, reality has burst the euphoria of regaining freedom from colonial domination; the decolonization process has been stalled and development is arrested. All we need do is simply consider the 17 countries, and we see critical similarities that cut across Africa itself—wars, refugees and IDPs, infrastructural dysfunction, democratic deficit, and the protracted leadership predicament. The paradox of the continent is terrifying: Mandela and Mugabe; Botswana and DR Congo, African Renaissance and African underdevelopment, democratisation and Boko Haram, religiosity and criminality.

I doubt if there is any university curriculum in Africa that teaches Oyebola’s Black Man’s Dilemma, but one is forced to ask whether, other things considered, his Afro-realism was not pointed in the right direction. In recent years, there has been an optimistic reportage of consistent economic progress in Africa. The catchphrase of ‘Africa Rising’ is meant to stand as a counterpoint to the many years of progressive underdevelopment on the continent. Thus, scholars, intellectuals and economists have been brimming with hope founded on Africa’s economic resilience in the face of global financial crisis as well as the slow but steady economic growth. But then, economics has been considered as a dismal science. In this case, economic statistics do not match sociological reality on the continent.

Two stark facts contradict the optimism of ‘Africa Rising.’ First, Africa is considered the most youthful continent because of an accelerating youth bulge. This simply implies that the youth population, ranging from 15 to 24 years old, is growing faster than any other continent. And there are roughly 200 million youths in this category. This demographic fact signals a source of tremendous hope for participation in labour markets, as well as being a budding resource for innovation and governance. Unfortunately, close to 60% of the 200 million youth are unemployed or unemployable. Thus, the youth which by their very name signals hope are themselves caught in the terrible cycle of deprivation; the African crisis that has been reproduced from one generation to the other. The second fact is that of poverty. Bessie Head, the South African writer sums up the situation: ‘Poverty has a home in Africa—like a quiet second skin. It may be the only place on earth where it is worn with unconscious dignity.’ I am not sure how long such a dignity will last. This is because protracted unemployment is a further insult that makes poverty a threat; poverty and unemployment are two sociological facts that portend a possible African Spring.

On another level, and since I read the ‘Blacks Don’t Read’ article, I have never stopped ruminating about the three elements of self-containment: ‘Ignorance, Greed and Selfishness.’ When we manage to overcome the high emotion induced by racial slur on the African image instigated by the article in question, maybe we can then return to a more sobering and realistic assessment. If these sociological elements are not fundamental to our predicament, what else is? Let us begin with ignorance. In Africa alone, 182 million adults are illiterate; they are joined in this category by 48 million youths. Presently, the adult literacy rate is 63%. The 70% of youth literacy rate in sub-Saharan Africa is the lowest in the world. But whatever hope we might want to entertain is snuffed out by a further consideration—what is the content that the literate youth consume? How many of today’s African youths are intelligent readers? How many youths are even historically aware of Africa’s past and present? How many have heard of Fanon, Nkrumah, the Nigerian Civil War, the great civilizations in Africa or even Africa’s economic dilemma? If the African youth is ignorant, are we not all ignorant?

Greed and selfishness are Siamese concepts in my view. And there can be no other terrible combination to explain how stagnant we have become in terms of socio-political dynamics of elite activities that undermine any progressive initiatives in Africa. John Maynard Keynes could have been talking about Africa when he remarked profoundly that ‘The moral problem of our age is concerned with the love of money.’ In Nigeria presently, the populace is being treated to an alarming reportage of corruption of such an alarming proportion that its very thought deadens one’s consciousness.